Performers

One of the by-products of specialising in renaissance sacred music is that we spend our lives working with a language none of us speaks — Latin. It is an unusual pleasure for us to sing a whole programme in vernacular languages — and to do so inevitably led us to the leading Protestant traditions: Byrd and Gibbons from the English, Schütz and Bach from the German.

To these composers we have added four pieces by John Rutter, who celebrated his 70th birthday this September. These anthems show off a side to Rutter which is not as widely explored as his carols, but whose more extended style fits in well with the polyphony which surrounds it in this programme.

French choral music of penance and praise from the 12th to 20th centuries including Brumel's Lamentations, motets by Duruflé and Poulenc, as well as the latter's cantata Figure humaine, and works by...